Some Chinese souring on North Korea ties

Published 8:29 pm, Saturday, February 16, 2013

YANJI CITY, China — Beds shook and teacups clattered in this town bordering North Korea, less than 100 miles from the site where the North said it detonated a nuclear test that exploded midmorning in the midst of Chinese New Year festivities.

At home and abroad, China has long been regarded as North Korea's best friend, but at home that sense of fraternity appears to be souring as ordinary people express anxiety about possible fallout from the test last Tuesday. The fact that North Korea detonated the device on a special Chinese holiday did not sit well, either.

Among Chinese officials, the mood toward the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, has darkened. The government is reported by analysts to be wrestling with what to do about a man who, in power for a little more than a year, thumbed his nose at China by ignoring its appeals not to conduct the country's third nuclear test, and shows no gratitude for China's largess as the main supplier of oil and food.

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"The public does not want China to be the only friend of an evil regime, and we're not even recognized by North Korea as a friend," said Jin Qiangyi, director of the Center for North and South Korea Studies at Yanbian University in Yanji City.

With its site near the border, Yanji City has long been a hub of North Korean affairs inside China. This is often where desperate defectors from the impoverished police state first seek shelter, where legal and illegal cross-border trade thrives, and where much of the population has roots in North Korea.

There are mixed attitudes here toward North Korea. There is tolerance among some toward the regime — mostly from those who profit financially. But there is also anger among many ethnic Korean Chinese about the suffering of the people living under the Kim dynasty, which relies on gulags to deal with dissent and where failed economic policies have left many people near starvation.

Longstanding Chinese policy has been to put up with the North, even when it ignores China's advice, because of fears that a collapse of the government would lead to a united Korea allied with the United States.